2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

PSA Abstracts
pair of spin-1/2 particles. There is not even an effective characterization of the
entangled states themselves, amongst the set of all mixed states. Philosophers
of quantum theory, expert at making conceptual distinctions and certainly no
strangers to the density operator formalism (cf. Gleason’s theorem and the
‘ignorance interpretation of mixtures’), have almost entirely ignored these
foundational problems. The present paper will survey the problems, discuss
their connection to problems in quantum information theory, and draw out
some of their implications for the voluminous philosophical literature on
quantum nonlocality.
Alberto Cordero Queens College & The Graduate Center
Realism And Underdetermination: Some Clues from The Practices-Up
Current theorizing about the nature of material systems effectively resolves
into a multiplicity of absolutely incompatible statements about physical systems
and their representation. Specifically, the most articulate recent attempts to
turn Standard Quantum Theory (SQT) into a coherent system, though much
better than previous offerings, flounder in effective empirical
underdetermination and mutual empirical equivalence, reviving old anti-realist
fears about quantum physics. I discuss such fears and find them unsound
nothing of global skeptical or agnostic significance really follows from the
kind of underdetermination presently encountered in fundamental quantum
theory. The case is instructive, however, for what it shows about the
characteristics and prospects of scientific realism as a perspective in
contemporary philosophy of science.
P
S
A
Kim Cuddington
The “Balance of Nature” metaphor in population ecology:
theory or paradigm?
I claim that the balance of nature metaphor operates as a shorthand for a
paradigm which view nature as a beneficent force. I trace the cultural origins
of this concept and demonstrate that it operates today in the discipline of
population ecology. Although it might be suspected that this metaphor operated
a pre-theoretic description of the more precisely defined notion of equilibrium,
I demonstrate that the balance concept has been used to define those types of
equilibrium which are deemed natural. This interaction suggests that the
metaphor is much more than a precursor of the theoretical concept of population
equilibrium.
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